A Mother's Love
by alation
Summary: Fire Lord Azulon is dead. How? A fic following Ursa as she grapples with her son's looming death, and Ozai as he prepares to do the unspeakable... but what will become of their son in the end?


I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Originally this was just going to be a oneshot, but I liked the idea so much that I'm going to roll with it for a chapter or two or three. This takes place in the window of time before Azulon is dead and after Ozai has been told that he will lose his firstborn. Oh, and spoilers for Zuko Alone. I tried to keep Ursa IC, but I'm going to have to keep editing to make her right. I will timeline at the top of each chapter, and even though hours and minutes aren't technically canon, they're important for the logistics of this fic.

"_The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother."_

_- Anon._

((One Hour and One Half since Ozai's Request – Forty-Five Minutes since Azula and Ursa's Talk))

The fabric of her underskirts brushed against her legs, and Ursa reached down to smooth them into place for the eighteenth time since she had entered the entrance hall to her husband's chambers. The silk was cool to her touch.

Ursa breathed deeply.

The doors where she had entered from the main hallway rose imperiously to her left. Another set of doors, smaller, were carved out of deep mahogany to her right, at the end of the long room. This "entrance hall" had one large window across from the seating area, giving a view of the turtleduck pond with the back gate directly behind it. Ursa wondered if Ozai ever looked out this window.

Or if he perhaps noticed its existence on the same level that he noticed his children.

Zuko. _Azula_. Ursa's delicate skin wrinkled into a frown. If any child needed a loving father, it was Azula. Though the Lady Ursa (given to royal habits) was not one to fall into habits like curling her hair around her fingers, she became nervous thinking of her daughter's recent behavior. Was it not her appointed task to raise the children to be wise, compassionate nobles?

_No_.

Ursa knew perfectly well how her husband so delighted in his daughter's ruthless perfection. Technically, she had not failed in any motherly duty… But her anxiety remained.

And yet... she and Azula had spoken.

Ursa shivered and shifted the knowledge she had gained from that talk into the back of her mind.

The child would begin innocently enough in her explanations, but when challenged… when reminded of limitations and failings, her temper would rage. That wasn't what worried her; it was the way Azula reminded her so vividly of one of the fire-crazed recruits gone mad by his own power, long gone from the world.

The Lady Ursa frowned, shook her head, and stood. She walked to the window and quieted her own upsetting thoughts.

They would both be fine young royals, Zuko and Azula. Perhaps her son would become a man of diplomacy in a rich dukedom; perhaps her daughter would marry a boy from the far northern islands, and secure the Fire Nation hold there. Ozai had supposedly begun communications with a powerful Head of the House.

Was that why he had summoned her tonight?

A gong reverberated through the palace, the responses of its brothers throughout the city vaguely perceived in the dark hour. The sun had set. Ursa could feel the universal draw of breath as the Firebenders of the city waned in power, and the she knew how the lamps were being turned high for heat and then covered for invisibility from Earth Kingdom troops should they break through the barricades and the walls. She remembered the unspoken fear, deeply buried though it was, that would manifest for Fire Nation citizens when the gongs struck and no soldiers were around to recommend they show their patriotism. The time right before the sun had set was usually the worst.

Ursa lifted her eyes towards the darkness and watched the garden slowly come alive with night-creatures. The turtleducks had long ago taken shelter beneath their mother's wing. Ursa noted the absence of Day-Lilies and Night-Roses with a touch of disappointment; those two flowers were famous for their consecutive budding and closing at the dawn and on the eve.

There were so few flowers in the palace gardens…

Just that very day, hadn't Zuko noticed so? He had spoken so sleepily to her as she held him on her lap. He remembered his Uncle Iroh from those last days before his ships left. Iroh had spent valuable final minutes reminding his nephew which flowers were poisonous, and after he was finished Zuko had only replied, "But there are no flowers in the garden!" and Iroh had only laughed, because Iroh always laughed…

Ursa smiled and looked down. Lu Ten had been like a brother to her boy. Like the brother she could never give him, like the second son she could never give Ozai.

Just a sister, just a daughter.

_Was that why he had summoned her tonight_?

Ursa shivered and turned.

A note lay on the small table beside her chair, the royal Fire Nation wax seal stamped excessively (it was only a note, yet all this pomp…) across its top. A few lines had been scrawled across the parchment. Remembering receiving it, the Lady Ursa's brow furrowed lightly and she tried to glean some further meaning from the words than,

"We must speak."

The statement irked her, as did this waiting, and she sighed though she kept her demeanor light. Frank and impassive, this note was a simple summons followed by the standard commands for secrecy and hails of the Fire Nation's glory. The only thing personal about her own husband's letter was remote enough to draw chills.

Ursa breathed in, closed her eyes, and turned back to the window.

_Has he always been so far away from me?_

The sound of footsteps came to her through the door.

_Finally_.

Ursa smiled, wisps of velvet charcoal hair sliding across her cheeks. She tucked the strands back into her circlet and listened. Ozai's voice skimmed the surface of her hearing. The contemplation and worry evened out from her face and she stood attentively, lifting her chin and folding her hands into her sleeves. She decided to greet him with two faces tonight. She would be both as a wife, and as a woman.

The Fire Prince Ozai's chambers spanned four vast rooms and three hotbaths. The first room was an entrance hall with one door at each end, the first leading into the main hallway and the other set leading back into the second room. This room acted as a dayroom and entertaining area, with an entrance to the gardens and many fine memoirs of Fire Nation battles of yore. Beyond this room lay the prince's bedchamber. The fourth room Ursa had never entered, though she had often gazed at the inlayed dragon guarding its door in the depths of night.

Ursa had been courteously asked to linger in the entrance hall by the same guard that now greeted her husband and opened the heavy latch, swinging the door inward. The guard held his helmet in the crook of his arm and bowed to the Lady Ursa. Ursa inclined her head and he stepped aside, allowing her husband to pass.

Ozai entered softly, with a snakelike domination beyond the corporeal. Though the mantle of his hair was perfumed with bathwater scents, the scent of smoke clung to his knuckles and emanated from beneath the fragrances. His ethereally pale skin shone in the way a man's skin does after he has trained, and his face was crooked in stern displeasure. He moved with superiority and without hurry, his hands tucked into his sleeves and his movements like oil. Ursa bowed to him in greeting and his head dropped in return, the smoky wisp of his beard touching his robes.

"I hope your evening has gone well, my husband Prince Ozai."

The guard backed from the room and Ozai did not reply until he had left.

"We must speak, Ursa." His voice rolled with gravel, reminded her of magma and steel.

"Yes," expression flitted across her face, "Yes, I know."

Ursa had never known her husband to hesitate. He did not now.

"We will continue to the bedchamber; I do not wish to be overheard." A small smile broke Ursa's refined mask of apathy as Ozai passed her. The formality of his demeanor after all of these years was nothing less than she would expect, and the anxiety he now concealed to outsiders with such proficiency reminded her of their first awkward moments of romance.

_It reminded her of how only she, of all his consorts, could touch his face and run her finger down his beard. Only she could make his lips curve in a smile, and for her he would bow his head, letting their lips meet._

Ursa looked one last time to the window, her eyes picking out the brightest constellations. The redhawk with its southern-star eye, the maiden's tears (or the teapot, depending on whether you were raised in the countryside or taught in the city observatories), the crown, the priest, and the mother bear with her little bear child, running brightest away from the moon.

Ursa did not need her mother's guile or woman's intuition to know that Ozai's plans had gone awry.

Azula had told her plenty during their little talk.

And even though the girl had sworn she had run away immediately after her father's galling request, Ursa knew when her daughter was lying.

She knew there was much Ozai would have to say to her.


End file.
